Case Against the Star

To Kansas City's evening Star (circ. 344,071), it looked like one of the biggest stories of the year. It played the story atop Page One and ran it for several columns inside the paper. So did the Star's morning edition, the Times (circ. 336,824). The story: the trial of the Government's criminal antitrust suit against the Kansas City Star Co., which puts out both papers. The charge: the Star and its morning paper had killed off their chief rival, the Kansas City Journal-Post, and then used their monopoly position to force advertisers to do business on their terms, e.g., advertise only in the Star, the Times, and over their radio station WDAF.

The villain of the Government's case and the only Star Co. staffer named in the criminal indictment* the paper's advertising director, Emil A. Sees, 59, who has run the company's ad department since 1950.

Last week in Kansas City's U.S. District Court, the Government finished putting on the stand 90 witnesses, including admen, former Star staffers, local advertisers and other publishers, to try to prove that the Star had been "monopolizing interstate trade and commerce in the dissemination of news and advertising."

Memo from the Boss. The Government witnesses agreed that doing business with the Star Co. had big disadvantages. Several businessmen testified that when the Star Co. found their ads in local weeklies or magazines, they were warned by the ad department: "So long as you can get space elsewhere, you don't need it in the Star." One owner of a small clothing store said he was told by the Star that if he continued advertising in Topeka's Capper's Weekly (owned by the late Senator Arthur Capper), his position in the Star would get "worse than ever." He testified that he found his ads buried on the Star's back pages. The Star Co., said other witnesses, also forced businessmen to put ads in the paper if they wanted time on the paper's radio-TV station.

Ad Director Sees, charged the Government, personally rode herd on the operation. Sees's motto, according to one witness, was "The more you squeeze [an advertiser] the more you get out of [him]." He often peppered his staff with such memos as "I notice Sullivan is still in the Journal-Post. Why? Why? Why?" An ex-Star staffer testified that Sees would "pound his fist on the desk and say, 'Go tell that so-and-so he's wasting his money advertising any place but in the Star.'"

Who's Killing Whom? In crossexamination, the Star's lawyers brought out that some of the complaints against Sees and the Star came from disgruntled former staffers. Many of the witnesses, the defense implied, confused aggressive sales tactics with illegal pressure. They even misunderstood the point of Sees's weekly meeting with his salesmen, at which he needled them by displaying copies of ads in other publications.

On the Government's charge that the Star Co. pushed the rival Journal-Post out of business in 1942, the Star had a strong argument. It was the Journal, said the Star's lawyers, that had been "operated solely to destroy the Star." The Journal had boasted in front-page editorials, said the defense, that it would put the Star out of business. The campaign, charged the Star, started after Multimillionaire Henry L. Doherty bought the Journal in 1931. Doherty, founder and big stockholder of the Cities Service Co., was outraged at the Star's fight against raising Kansas City's gas rates; he was determined to put the paper out of business. To undercut the Star and attract its advertisers, said the defense lawyers, the Journal virtually gave away ads in secret contracts with big advertisers. But instead of hurting the Star, the result was to wreck the Journal.

Near week's end, when the Government rested its case, the Star won an important point. The Government had argued that the combination ad rate used by the Star (i.e., an advertiser could not buy space in one paper alone but had to buy in both) was illegal. But Federal Judge Richard M. Duncan ruled that the combination rate was legal, under a U.S. Supreme Court ruling (TiME, June 1), as long as the single rate was not used "for the purpose of monopolizing the field." It was up to the jury to decide whether the Star had done so. But when the Star moved to have the whole case dismissed, the judge held that enough evidence had been submitted to let the case go to the jury. This week the Star planned to put on its full-scale defense.

*The Star's politicking President Roy A. Roberts was also named in the original indictment, but the case against him was dismissed three weeks ago on the ground that he was not directly involved in the crimes charged. A companion civil suit against Roberts, Sees and the Star will not be tried until after the criminal case.

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